Making My List & Checking It Twice

"Biography is an exercise in context."

Since reading it weeks ago, I've been mulling over Susan Cheever's opening statement as she covered the well documented anti-Semitism of poet, novelist and playwright EE Cummings in the early to mid twentieth century. Where is the line in biography that separates giving context for the subject's era and making excuses for a subject's behavior regardless of the era?

With respect to artists whose work I admire, this disconnect has long troubled me. How successful are you at separating art and artist? Does it help when the artist in question is long gone? Put another way, is it easier to excuse behavior that is repellent to you by using historical context as Cheever does with Cummings? How about living artists? If one of them is overtly political and you enjoy their work but their politics disgust you, do you support the work anyway? More than once, my struggle with this disconnect has had the whiff of hypocrisy. Is my love of his exquisite tone reason enough to overlook the misogyny of Miles Davis?

And here's one to consider: When your posthumous biography is written, which behaviors or attitudes of yours will need "historical context"? I'll give you lots of time to answer; I'm pretty occupied with my own list at present.